Dear Hacks,
I feel I introduce myself here to let you know that I’m a real person trying to solve a problem I’m passionate about.
My name is Pedro Moura, I live in the beautiful city of Porto located in the north of Portugal. Some years ago I would have said I’m a software engineer, now, after almost 4 years of grinding my own software company in the news industry, I feel that calling myself a “software engineer” is way too reductive. Maybe “wearer of many hats” is a better description, but it’s too cliche for me.
I could go all day about the things that led me here but this post is not about me. So let’s get started.
First things first, in this post (and all future posts) Hack = Journalist.
Today is a very important day for me because I can finally share with the freelancing journalist community what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks.
In the past years, freelance journalism has risen at double the speed of any freelancing activities. While some do it for the freedom, other do it by necessity, I’m not here to discuss if this new trend is sustainable or even good thing.
We just have to accept this new reality and make sure Hacks can still effectively play their crucial role in society:
Keep government accountable.
With this in mind, I decided to explore the problems freelance Hacks were experiencing. After a sitting down and talking with freelance Hacks I immediately found an ubiquitous problem amongst them:
“I spend too much time doing non-billable work.”
With this enemy in my sights I decide to start working on a software I called Hackyn - Turning Hacks intro Productivity Hackers.
Hackyn will be a software to automate the boring parts of being a freelance Hack but my ability to help Hacks will not stop there. Another important topic that came up during my conversations was that, as of today, there is no centralized space for freelancing Hacks to connect with each other and share their successes, their tips/tricks, even their failures.
This is why Hackyn will come with a fully featured forum exclusively for vetted freelance Hacks. I’m sure this will turn out to be one of the best online resources for any freelance Hack.
Finally, I’m also preparing a series of posts for this blog. The first “useful” post for this blog will be called “Hacking Payments” and will feature a bunch of useful tips to help my fellow Hacks get paid on time.
Stay tuned for more,
Pedro Moura - Creator of hackyn.com